On March 31st, 2023, a little bit more than 3 years after its debut, the YouTube channel of Amano Pikamee will be closed. With no short of 670,000 subscribers and 150,000 on her Twitch channel, a large community of fans will bid farewell to the character they go to know, with no clue whether they will hear from her again. As always with popular V-Tubers, her quitting announcement (called “graduation” in the field) has provoked a time of intense reactions within her community with many very moving messages filled with gratitude and thanks, sadness and bitterness.
Being myself a Pikamee fanboy (#pikarmy) and having already shed a lot of tears after her graduation announcement, I wondered how to turn this sad news into something brighter before her leave. Devoid of any talent for media creation, I decided to write this tribute with the precious help of Kmeuh, Yattoz and Kohaque.
This article was designed to be shared not only to people who are already fans of Pikamee but to everyone whatever your experience is with V-Tubers may be. It will explain why so many of us are V-Tuber watchers, why Pikamee has a special place in this world but also to look back on the conditions of her departure and try to define what her legacy will be.
But let’s start by explaining V-Tubing. For those of you who want to skip the tutorial, go directly to the next part. And if you just want to enjoy the best of Pikamee, a team of Pikamee clippers manage to create a best-of of these 3 years : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSZvARgnFzA
“I’m All Alone This Year…”
It’s impossible to talk about streaming without going back to the lockdowns that were putted in place around the world following the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
In a few weeks, a very large part of the world population found itself locked down in their homes. An impressive number of people felt abandoned, sometimes with no one to talk to, in a climate of stress and anxiety for which many of us were not prepared. Everyone spent this particular time in their own way, and in order to contextualize my mental state at that time, the discovery of Twitch and the world of V-Tubers (as well as the presence of my cat) was a real way out that prevented me from falling into depression and having anxiety attacks that could have been much stronger.
My emotional attachment to the streamers world was created by this unique context and I’m not the only one in this case. In fact, each time a famous V-Tuber announce their graduation you can find many testimonies of people who explain how the V-Tuber streams helped them to overcome a harsh and sometimes painful daily life.
I’m quite aware though that, without any context, seeing someone watching hours and hours of Twitch or Youtube streaming can be very confusing or misunderstood. In France, we had a TV anchor who said back in 2014: “You really must have fucking nothing better to do” than to go on Twitch watching gaming streams. In 2023, the phenomenon is now better accepted thanks to a more well-known concept: parasocial interaction.
Rather than trying to explain it myself, let’s call our good friend Wikipedia:
Parasocial interaction (PSI) refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms. Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having no or limited interactions with them. PSI is described as an illusory experience, such that media audiences interact with personas (e.g., talk show hosts, celebrities, fictional characters, social media influencers) as if they are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them.
A common and harmless example of a parasocial relationship would be that fictional character who made us dream as a child or teenager as we took pleasure imagining ourselves becoming their friend.
The relationship between a streamer and their audience goes several steps further than this simple example, though.
First and foremost, it’s a truism but the streamer is a real person. So the parasocial interactions take place on a chat with a real person and not a fictional character. There is also the business model topic. The streamer earn a business as their income is often based in part or even almost totally on money donations from their community. The person who gives their money could therefore be seen him/herself not only as a viewer but also as a patron in a one-time or recurrent basis. That person will also often be thanked directly by the streamer.
V-Tubing push the previous concept even further since the streamer is not visible but their presence on the screen is represented by a virtual avatar with an elaborate design and which, very often, has motion capture that transcribes movements and moods . This can create very powerful parasocial phenomena: a seductive fiction in form and a human being in substance.
And that’s when Japan comes into play, since the “comfort industry” is well aware of how to develop these characters and how to create pop-culture phenomena from them. Companies started creating YouTube channels and recruting women mostly, and men more rarely, to act as actress and actors and animate virtual characters designed with utmost care and detail in manga style.
I wrote “recruiting” and that’s because it’s important to note that it’s a real and thought casting process. V-Tubing is a complex and tiring job who need very professional attitudes and a real talent when it comes to creating streaming content. We’ll get back to that in more detail later in this text, but keep in mind that you can’t just take any young woman with a nice voice for it to work. Casting and accompaniment need a real expertise to prosper.
As of today, the V-Tubing world is primilarly dominated by two japanese companies: Cover Corporation which manages the Hololive agency and Any Color which manages the Nijisanji agency. There are other similar but still small initiatives : Crunchyroll launched with some success their own mascott Hime’s channel, VShoujo is s a rising VTuber company based in the United States and Sony tried but never managed to make successful their V-Tubers “VERSEⁿ” (Seriously, guys, if there was an award for Worst Search Engine Optimization, they’d be a strong contendant).
Let’s end this tutorial part by a simple question : “By the way, WHY are you watching that ?”
To answer this, I’m going to mention a very relevant idea from Yattoz:
There is no real difference between someone who streams and people who like to turn on the TV or radio to simulate a presence, or fans who buy magazines dedicated to their favorite artist to feel “closer” to their idols.
I like this comparison because it seems pretty accurate and timeless. At the end of the day, the V-Tuber is an entertainment business like any other. The form it takes has changed, but the community surrounding the artists has not. The phenomenon is much more advanced and the subculture is being built more quickly through the communication channels we have today.
To explain this subculture, its lores and memes in an exhaustive way would require an intense work spread over several months, even several years, or even a whole book. We will refrain from doing so here and focus on the subject of this article: Pikamee
“GET A JOB DAYO!!”
Pikamee’s journey began with the opening of its Youtube channel on March 19, 2020 (about two days after Covid’s first closing in France. Coincidence? Absolutely). She was part of a group of V-Tubers called VOMS. VOMS is also the name of the “company” that created the 2D models of their design but is not strictly speaking acting as an agency. As a result, the control of VOMS V-Tubers is not as strict. Pikamee was not an employee and GYARI, the founder of VOMS, a designer, music composer and animator, did not receive any money from what Pikamee and the others earned through subscriptions and donations made during their streams. VOMS’ contracts were only for the commercial use of their designs
This kind of contract gave Pikamee more independence and freedom than your average V-Tuber. By being largely independent, she was managing most of her communication alone and had a community to build mostly by herself . Her channel really took off a few months after its debut, allowing her to learn some real professional reflexes from her experience.
To better illustrate her evolution, let’s look at one of Pikamee’s defining features: her decision to make most her streams available to a japanese and english-speaking audience.
Even though this should have been easier for her since she’s born in an american-japanese family, this was still is a difficult task. Pikamee needed to simultaneously stream (play and entertain the chat by talking to them), repeat what she said in both language and regularly switch from one language to the other depending on who she was talking to in the chat. She also had the habit to play a game with voices in a one language, and subtitles in the another one. She had a real desire (and it was a good business practice, let’s not be naïve there) to allow as many people as possible to follow her.
Let’s digress briefly on V-Tubing and languages:
If V-Tuber who speak english is very easy to find today, you must remember that before Hololive’s 1st V-Tuber generation’s launch in September 2020 (with the notable exceptions of Kiryu Coco and in a way Inugami Korone), it was difficult for a non japanese-speaking viewer to enjoy V-Tuber content save for clip channels which really allowed that community to grow. The V-Tubing scene really changed since then and it’s not unusual for a V-Tuber to master three languages notably for the indonesian ones who frequently also speak japanese and english. There is also Takanashi Kiara who speaks german, english and japanese. Pikamee still stood out since her double-language streams was one of her channel main feature.
As far as we are talking about professionalism, here are another 3 examples:
- Pikamee was also one of the V-Tuber who managed her character’s emotional faces changes the best. She adapt her character face quickly and easily depending on the stream content in a very impressive way.
- She could talk about some personal and sensitive topics while keeping a good distance with her private life.
- She was also careful about viewers not spending an unreasonable amount of money on donations.
“You Were My Good Friend Dayo…”
Besides these purely professional characteristics, Pikamee will remain an atypical streamer while being a rather academic V-Tuber.
She closely followed all the rules of the profession:
- Her streams were a mix of games, reactions and chats/zatsudan.
- Her channel followed the main rules of V-Tubing (no politics, no drama, no talking about other V-Tubers, …), which made for a safe space.
- She had her own emoji for social networking and her nickname.
- Her story was built as she streamed.
- Although it was not common, Pikamee sometimes participated in collab streams with other V-Tubers.
- Pikamee has devoted a lot of effort to regularly renew the graphic aspect of its channel while keeping its consistency.
On this last point, you should know that Pikamee really did her best to renew her visuals since her basic character was entitled to various outfits (like the famous and criminally cute dinosaur pajamas) as well as to two new models created by another illustrator named Shiratama (it should be noted that it’s quite a rare gesture to have a model made by a new illustrator) : Isekai Pikamee and Thunder Monster Pikamee. She also took advantage during all these years of GYARI’s unique graphic style to give life to her character but also to invest herself in the creation of new 2D models. In the end, Pikamee had many more models and accessories than the average of her colleagues.
However, Pikamee had a few features that weren’t on par with most of the V-Tubing world ran by agencies. First, she didn’t have any kind of idol activity, no music singles to release or dances to perform. Her personality was more like a good friend or a “girl next door” than the “girlfriend experience” that other V-Tubers sometimes offer.
Behind that last filthy expression is a less scary situation than one might expect. If the viewer involved is aware that it is just a game of course. The “girlfriend experience” is still a type of entertainment that can provide some comfort and that some people may need, provided they enjoy it in a conscious and reasonable way.
But this seduction/admiration dimension is pretty much embedded in the comfort business that many streamers engage in, especially those from Hololive. This is not quite the case with Pikamee. Besides, one of the main running gags of the participants of her chat was to systematically refuse to ask Pikamee out, to never ask her to marry them and to add “as a friend” at the end of their sentences.
It’s a cliché, but the cat is the mirror of the streamer. The way Pikamee expressed herself was very much imbued with the direct and teasing culture of the internet. She also talked openly about her past and present family and social life, which was sometimes a bit sad, or worse, depressing (social anxiety, health, family or school problems, among others). One of her first breaks had been particularly striking when she announced that her cat had a life-threatening illness and that she wanted to take care of it until the end. But sometimes stories have happy endings and her cat survived, so Pikamee was back on the air a few days later.
Kettle Confirms She is a Kettle
However, Pikamee cannot be reduced to that and despite her sometimes sad/depressive IRL stories, we will remember her mostly for her humor, her good mood and her extremely communicative laugh. Her laughter will become her vocal signature, with the word “dayo” that she regularly uses at the end of her sentences, and it can’t be better described than the sound that a kettle makes..
Let’s take a moment to enjoy it:
Pikamee’s streams were a bit like her laugh. A place full of good moods with an adorable and sincere streamer. She was gifted with real comic talent along with a childish tone and used these to give everyone a good time. Her generosity and joyful tone gave Pikamee’s streams a particular charm which could be seen in her lore as well as her chat.
Pikamee’s lore was a mix of naïve stuff: she was 500 billion years old when she debuted, she was a fan of wooden spatulas (yes) and was often pictured with her own spatula called Tomoe. She dies if you remove her antennae, her real father is called Papamee on stream and her real mother Mamamee. No one knows how she manages to add the word “dayo” at the end of most of her sentences too… Her chat was also a very chill place but showed no mercy when it was teasing her or cracking jokes at her, or even bounce off her fucking up something. Other than the “as a friend” gimmick I mentioned earlier, we can also talk about how her streams was ironically labelled “family friendly” by the chat whenever she let out “fuck / frick” when she was scared or angry.
All of that was part of a clearly established game between Pikamee and her loyal and diverse community. And guess how her community was named ? The Pikarmy. The only army with no gun and no intention to make war except just for fun against her own boss.
You could find this same good atmosphere both on Youtube and Twitch, where she debuted on 03/29/2021, where Pikamee often streamed more react/shitpost content, according to what the english-speaking audience on Twitch expected. She also added a reactions soundbox for donations and subs. However, no matter which streaming platform she used, this didn’t change anything on how she spoke or interacted with her audience.
Even with the V-Tubing fictional layer and the differences between platforms, streaming still is an embodied task and Pikamee understood that as she stayed true too herself until the end no matter the format or circumstances. Told you she was a pro.
To better understand the atmosphere that reigned in the Pikamee universe, I can only recommend you to watch the videos of the YouTube channel of ClipChama. He is a dedicated Pikamee clipper who has done a lot for the community through his selflessness and the quality of his clips. He was not the only one and the clippers are real heroes who helped a lot to share the good mood or the bittersweet moments in the Pikamee streams.
In the end, the only notable change to remember during her whole carrier is that her tone of voice went more and more acute as time passed to get back to what was most probably her natural voice, thus contributing in strengthening the link between her and her audience.
Pikamee Talks about Her Graduation…
Our story takes a grimmer turn during January 2023. Her community was worried after she left for several weeks right after the holidays, which was quit unusual. Even if she wasn’t a hardcore streamer as far as stream duration went, Pikamee still was a regular one.
After her several weeks of absence, she announced in early February to start streaming again by announcing that she would play Hogwarts Legacy. A major controversy, as only Twitter knows how to do, occurred. Pikamee found herself caught up in a situation she hadn’t anticipated, where mass harassment caught up with her. She ended up canceling her stream and went back to silence.
Another few weeks of silence later, she announced in a serious message, far from her usual tone, that she would graduate on 03/31. Few days later, she went on with a more usual chit-chat stream to talk about it.
That announcement caused a stir and rumors spread about how her quitting was caused by the harassment she went through a few weeks earlier. This had been quickly debunked by GYARI who announced that Pikamee quitting had been planned way before. This has been confirmed later by the streamer Pomu Rainpuff from Nijisanji, who happens to be a great fan of Pikamee. During a very emotional moment, she declared having been told about it before the Hogwarts Legacy “controversy” by Pikamee herself.
Far-right scumbags always know how to use anything to try to sell us their hatred and don’t care about facts. These little piles of garbage continued to try to play on the emotion Pikamee’s announcement caused (which they don’t care about, by the way), to redirect hatred on trans people by spreading rumors on how they would have made Pikamee quit by boycottong Hogwarts Legacy. Even though Pikamee’s community mainly managed to stay out of these bullshit, they couldn’t prevent the mass harrassment against trans people or how some people (including some trans activists) kept on posting heinous tweets against Pikamee or to rejoice of her quitting, making this all even more bitter.
For my part, I think the reasons behind Pikamee quitting are none of our business. It’s her choice and anyone uninvolved should never question that.
The Tea is Ready…
It’s about time we conclude this article and speak about Pikamee’s legacy.
She’ll certainly stay a very unique case in V-Tubing’s history and one that inspire many. She was there early and embodied some kind of comforting streaming, fun and passionate while keeping a professional approach on creating quality content.
She’s proof that V-Tubing doesn’t need idols to produce content a lot of people can enjoy. Beyond that, Pikamee will remain one of the most sincere, generous and endearing streamers I’ve got the chance to stumble accross. I have a sincere and strong admiration for all the talent she deployed in creating her content and her community. She deserves all the success she got and will stay someone I’ll look up to.
If we can hope to see her again in another place in the near future, it’s time to say goodbye as I write those lines. And damnit that’s hard.
Farewall Pikamee, we won’t forget you but fuck we already miss you my friend dayo.
